Baxters Loch Ness Marathon: my next attempt to qualify for the Boston Marathon

102 days until my next attempt to qualify for the Boston marathon.

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In my previous attempt to qualify, a month ago today, I failed to do so by about 15 minutes.

(Was it just a month ago? It seems much longer than this already.)

I was chastened by the Edinburgh marathon. I think I might be able to qualify for Boston, but I'm no longer as confident. Maybe I can't run a 3:30.

But I'm going to give it a good try.

I had a good chat with a professional colleague a few months ago, and he said something that stuck with me. He said his philosophy was to live life to its fullest. And if you knew the guy, you'd know it's true. It's not a showy, hedonistic thing. Basically, it's a choice: when given the chance to do something or not, he always chooses to do it.

So that's a bit what I want to take on board. I want to do stuff, not just stand by.

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So my next chance to qualify for the Boston Marathon will be the Loch Ness Marathon. It's hilly, apparently, but it does seem like there's lots of downhill in the first several miles. On paper, it might not be as fast as the Edinburgh Marathon, but hopefully, being in October in the Scottish highands, it won't be hot.

I now feel like I know what I want to do training-wise. There's a running loop in my town that's 5.4 miles long (it's an abbreviated version of the 10k race loop that runs in the fall). I want to build up to running the loop 4 times, for a distance of 21.2 miles.

Surprisingly, I feel like I have a ways to go to get there. The first time I ran the loop twice (a bit over a week ago), I was deeply fatigued the next day. So, I may have some deep, residual fatigue from Edinburgh yet. Again, I feel like I might not have done enough distance-wise for the Edinburgh marathon.